Friedberg's Climate platform reached 10 million acres with free software before monetizing through premium seed and fertilizer recommendations.
“And then we had the idea of charging for certain add ons, certain models. Like, it would recommend what seed to use and recommend what fertilizer to use”
Friedberg advocates pricing ag products at one-third of value created, citing the Monsanto model.
“I generally think that ag products should be built and priced on a value creation system. So, you know, this is the Monsanto pricing model.”
Friedberg details potato economics: $5,000 per acre revenue with $1,000-$2,000 operating costs for current methods.
“Okay? And that $5,000 of revenue is requiring an investment of 1 to $2,000 an acre.”
Friedberg advocates value-based pricing where farmers keep two-thirds of created value, technology provider one-third.
“I generally think that ag products should be built and priced on a value creation system. So, you know, this is the Monsanto pricing model.”
Friedberg argues agtech digital companies failed by creating isolated data layers without integration, while farmers pay for results not data.
“And farmers don't wanna pay for data. They wanna pay for results. So that's a that's kind of a very hard thing to do without the the integration of data.”
AgFunder
“Farmers want to pay for value. I want to pay for ROI. I want to spend $8 and get $60 back.”
Friedberg cites MrBeast selling 50 million chocolate bars with zero customer acquisition cost via existing audience.
“If you already have a 100,000,000 people following you like MrBeast does, he just goes on his video and he says, buy my chocolate bar. And he sells 50,000,000 chocolate bars.”
Friedberg explains fintech companies can accept lower profits per customer without shareholder pressure over short-term declines.
“Companies generally have a lower operating expense per customer so they can make less profit per customer and build a great business.”
Friedberg explains WeatherBill achieves 40% claims frequency versus typical insurance industry's under 3%, creating operational barrier for competitors.
“Those small variations occur to 40% of farmers. So 40% of our farmers getting some money back at the end of the season”